Language of Painting

As a painter, Korean-born woman, and naturalized American citizen, defining and deconstructing identity has been a central theme of my work. I have been employing the process of stripping paint away as a gesture that corresponds to my ideas about awareness and in essence shaving layers off of myself.

Symposium_eros 0.1

Acrylic, bailey twines on burlap, and piano

December 2017

At-One-Ment

Acrylic, bailer twines, a claw-foot bathtub, 156x46 inches

(Made in the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, September 2017)

Title comes from word atonement. The solid piece of bathtub symbolizes the ship, containment and a safe place. The 293 yellow flowers are made of acrylic paints placed inside the tub, for solidarity and tribute for the drowned bodies of high school kids from the sinking MV Sewol in Korea.

Frequency of Intention

In this series I am thinking energy and its visual frequency. I use intention to mean the mental projection of “willing” that cause things to occur in the physical world. All organic matter—plants, rocks, even the matter making up our own body— produces tiny vibrations. Whenever we form specific intentions to interact with organic matter, that intention produces a distinctive, elevated jump in the frequency of vibrations produced.

So my questions are : Pigments are grinded from rocks, which have frequency. By amplifying frequencies, is it possible to see the visual data of pigments respond to me? Does that mean that a painting can respond to an individual? Can a painting literally communicate and interact? What I am saying is, can painting sing?

Everything remains in a state of inactivity. That is, until you form an intention.

Based on Pythagoras's harmony and proportion I imagined a gateway to another dimension by going through the acrylic curtains I created, accompanied by images of flower of life, sphere of music with Pythagoras playing the scale.

I began experimenting with the use of Arduino, for the purpose of facilitating a dialogue across the auditory and the visual within the realm of painting. Initially forming the idea through Isaac Newton, who proposed that musical tones and color tones shared common frequencies—as did Goethe in his book Theory of Color, I wanted to study a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality: for example, when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.

Through conductive paint, it picks up the electricity of the viewer when approached. The chip is programmed to emit AbC#, a note tribute to the opening chord of French composer Olivier Messiaen’s Prelude. Messiaen himself was concerned with visualizing color in music and symmetrical composition.

Gorgias was a legendary asshole sophist who was able to convince anyone to his viewpoint, whether it was morally sound or not. He often took unpopular and ridiculous positions just to prove his point and accumulated considerable wealth through charging lots of money for his performance; he erected a gold statue of himself in the public temple. Plato disliked Gorgias-kind rhetorician, clearly in opposition making point of philosophy is different from rhetoric or oratory. However I think Socrates had a special respect for Gorgias for his twisted character.

The circular geometric symbol in the painting is called Flower of Life.

Drawing with Fox

Acrylic paint shattered. I didn't realize how porous the paint is. With cold temperature, a month of making this lace sheet looking paint was done. But I like sad art too.

Isn't this ship magnificent? I wanted to drape the lace paint around it. One can dream big, whatever. Some day, some day.

What I could save after the shatter. Could this be like a drawing somehow?

Look at this composition! Damn..fine. Wish I was a photographer! My phone camera doesn't do any justice.

I definitely had a drawing in mind here. Line drawing. Why is this so fascinating? I don't know.

Another line drawing in snow.

This is a yarn drawing. I liked how Rossana's hair reflected the line drawing too.

Rogue Valley

These works are direct response from meditation. They take a place where mind wonders, clear from external validation and flows freely and clearly, in a state of concentrated awareness. It has no resistance or conflict and being fully in the present.